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  "If there is an energy drain," surmised Spock, glancing up briefly from his station, "the life-support systems may well be affected. The last transmissions from the Harriet Tubman indicated not only power loss but a series of unexplained power surges and overloads once they came within the nebula itself."

  "There's someone alive over there, all right," said Barrows suddenly. "They're making a run for it."

  On the front screen the black vessel heeled and dropped, trying to plunge beneath the Enterprise and away to safety. Kirk snapped, "Get a tractor beam on them, Mr. Dykstra!" even as Barrows hit the helm, dropping the starship downward like a guillotine blade toward the fugitive vessel. The unknown ship veered, banked, trying sluggishly to stay out of the limits of the beam. But its reserves were depleted, its pilot at the limit of endurance.

  "We've got them, Captain," Barrows reported.

  "Put her in reverse, then," said Kirk. "Let them tow us for a while."

  The dark ship's engines glowed, flared. Then there was a spurt of red from the nacelles, and their brightness dulled from red to brown as their inner heat bled away into the cold black of vacuum. Spock reported, "Interior power in the ship exhausted. Life-support systems closing down."

  Kirk leaned to the transceiver on his chair arm and spoke again over the sea-roar of static. "This is the Federation Starship Enterprise, repeat, this is the Enterprise. Come in."

  "They're drifting, Captain," reported Barrows. "Engines dead."

  "Maybe more than the engines," Mahase added softly.

  "Are you getting any life readings?" Kirk glanced back at Spock.

  The V of the Vulcan's slanted brows deepened. "Unclear, Captain. The ship is, as Lieutenant Barrows observed, very heavily—and rather oddly—shielded. Moreover, what readings I get are extremely unusual and warped by what appears to be mu-spectrum radiation originating from a point within the ship."

  "Mu-spectrum?" Lao looked sharply up from the post he had taken at the weapons console. "But that's…" He cut himself off, conscious he had broken into the conversation of his commanders.

  "…highly characteristic of the Turtledove Anomalies," finished Kirk thoughtfully.

  Then, over the buzz of static, a man's voice, hoarse with strain as if fighting for air to speak. "Federation…"

  "Do you copy?" demanded Kirk. "You're in serious trouble. Prepare to beam over."

  "No," whispered the voice. There was another sound, another voice perhaps, and the violent hiss of steam.

  Coolant in the console coils, thought Kirk. The whole bridge system must be rupturing. The static peaked, swamping that exhausted voice as it gasped again, "Never…"

  Kirk traded a glance with Spock. "Cyanotic disorientation?"

  "Or one hell of a guilty conscience," put in McCoy.

  On the screen before them, the dulling engines of the black ship flared again, sharp and orange. Kirk felt the vibration of the tractor beam through the decking as the other ship made one final, futile effort to break free. Then the brief glow died.

  Kirk hit the toggle of the comm link. "Mr. Organa, prepare a boarding party. Full combat and environmental protection. Dr. McCoy, get Nurse Chapel and yourself suited out and join us. . . ." He flipped the toggle to the ship-to-ship link. "Unknown Starship, we're going to board you and take you off, if you won't come of your own accord," he said.

  There was silence. Kirk nodded to McCoy, who turned to leave the bridge. Then, with agonizing slowness, the voice spoke again over the subspace link. "Surrender," it said thickly. "Beam us…coordinates…"

  Kirk was already on his feet, speaking down into the comm link to Transporter. "Get a fix on them; I'm coming down. Security to Transporter Room Two. Mr. Winfield, you have the conn."

  "Is there anything in any of the standard warnings about this area that concerns—well—any of this?"

  Lao's question broke the uneasy silence of the turbolift as the lighted bands of floors flashed across the lift's dark viewing bar. Kirk, absorbed in his own speculations, looked at him in momentary surprise: Lao's brilliance, his expertise with computers, and the obviousness of his mechanical and physical abilities sometimes masked his youth and inexperience.

  A curious thing, thought Kirk, being a mentor. It didn't make him feel old, precisely, but it did make him realize how far he himself had come in the almost five years of the Enterprise's mission. It did make him aware that instead of being thirty-four now, he was only a few months short of forty.

  "Not…as such."

  Lao's brows descended, baffled. Spock explained, "The standard warnings in this sector deal with probabilities of the unexpected. Within five parsecs of any proven or suspected Anomaly Point, there seems to be a higher percentage of unlikely occurrences: a seven percent increase in computer malfunctions not provably due to operator or mechanical error, a four percent increase in overall statistical variation of biochemical experiments…"

  "And most incidents of infestation by yagghorth," said Kirk quietly, "seem to take place within five parsecs of Anomaly Points."

  Lao flinched. As well he might, Kirk thought. He himself had never seen a yagghorth—some ascribed the name to some ancient reader of H. P. Lovecraft in Starfleet, but there was disturbing evidence of different origins—but he'd been on board vessels that had been infested, and had helped retrieve the remains of crewmen from the vent tubes and ducts where the creatures customarily stored their prey.

  And he'd seen the tapes. In the past few weeks, he was positive that everyone on the ship had seen the tapes, just as they'd read the reports about the Tubman's disappearance. Even the best of them was unclear, having been found in a jettison pod in Sector Eight; it had been made after the ship's power had blown, and the skeletal shape, the gleaming, squidlike head and dripping tentacles, had been lit only by the fires of the unknown merchant vessel's burning engine room. But the image itself—eyeless, hissing, swaying as it ripped bodies open with the neat ghastliness of a razor—was the stuff of nightmares, like an escapee from the blackest pits of Hell.

  "One couldn't get in through our shielding, could it?" Lao tried very hard to sound casual. "I mean, Constitution-class starships are pretty much proof against anything, aren't they?"

  The door slipped open before them, to the cool, even lighting of the Deck Seven corridors, the bright uniforms of the men and women of the second watch as they went about their jobs.

  "Ensign," Kirk said, "the first thing you're going to find out about deep space is that nothing is proof against everything that's out there—and that what we can imagine is not how it's going to be."

  Chapter Two

  THE GOLD SHIMMER of the beam chamber was solidifying into humanoid shapes as Kirk, Spock, and Ensign Lao entered Transporter Room Three. Dr. McCoy and Christine Chapel were already there, unshipping the collapsible gurney from behind its magnetized wall panel. Injectors of tri-ox, adrenaline, and antishock were already laid out. Mr. DeSalle was there, too, with a couple of burly redshirts. At the transport console with Mr. Kyle—making adjustments to allow for the peculiar shielding on the black ship—Mr. Scott reported, "There's only six of them, Captain."

  "That doesn't mean they won't come out shooting." Kirk had picked up fugitive crews before. Besides, these people had been ready to choose death in the cold of space before surrender to the Federation. It argued, as McCoy had said, for fairly guilty consciences.

  "Phasers on stun, Mr. DeSalle."

  The sparkling columns of gold coalesced.

  Humanoid, at any rate.

  Beside him, Nurse Chapel took an involuntary step forward.

  One of the fugitives, a Vulcan boy in late adolescence, was unconscious, supported by the small, thin man in the center of the group. This man made a swift move, swiftly checked as Chapel halted like one not willing to startle a frightened, and potentially dangerous, beast. The other members of the newcomer crew closed defensively around them, but Kirk knew instinctively that that thin, nondescript individual, with his burned hands and baggy,
cinder-colored clothing, was their leader.

  Kirk stepped forward. "You are under arrest on suspicion of piracy. I'm Captain James T. Kirk; you're aboard the Federation Starship Enterprise."

  The reaction was the last thing he expected. One man—tall and lanky with dark hair stiff with sweat—laughed, a cracked bark of overstrained nerves. The curvaceous Orion woman widened her eyes in astonishment and glanced across at another crewman, short and dark and cherubic, who started to speak, a look of protest in his eyes.

  The fugitive captain said, "Not now, Thad."

  The tall Klingon woman behind him stepped forward and put a supporting arm around the unconscious Vulcan boy's waist.

  The leader held up his hands to show them empty. "I'm Dylan Arios," he said. His hair was green, hanging in stringy points against the prominent cheekbones and square, fragile jaw. The hue of the discolored flesh around the watchful green eyes, the stains on the makeshift bandages that decorated his fingers and wrists spoke of alien blood.

  McCoy looked up from his tricorder. "Get that boy on the gurney," he ordered shortly, and after a moment's hesitation—and a nod from Arios—the Klingon woman half-carried the Vulcan boy forward, Chapel stepping up onto the transport platform to help.

  The three remaining on the platform—the Orion girl, at whom Lao and every other man in the room were gazing with frank admiration; the young man called Thad; and the tall, scar-faced man who had laughed—stirred among themselves as if they would speak, but Arios held up his hand again warningly and said, "Not now." His voice was the light, scratchy tenor Kirk had heard over the roar of static from the black starship's bridge. Turning back to Kirk, he explained, "We had a leak in the subsidiary reactor. Our med section went down."

  "That your whole crew?" McCoy adjusted oxygen over the boy's waxen face, ran a scanner quickly along his chest, and noted the dangerous levels of toxins in the blood, the shock, trauma, exhaustion. "The six of you?"

  Arios nodded, after a fraction of a second's hesitation. "Stay with Sharnas, Phil," he said, and the tall man stepped down from the platform.

  "Will do, Master." He caught very briefly at the corner of the gurney to steady himself, but let it go immediately.

  DeSalle cast a quick glance at Kirk as Chapel pushed the gurney toward the turbolift doors, Phil following in her wake; Kirk nodded, and DeSalle signaled one of the redshirts to join the little procession down to sickbay.

  "We couldn't get your readings clearly," explained Arios, folding his arms and stepping back as McCoy aimed the scanner in his direction. "We were attacked in the nebula by a ship we barely saw. It put out our visual, so all we were getting of you was your mass and power readings, and they were close to our attacker's. Our power was almost exhausted. Flight was our only recourse."

  "You couldn't…" began Lao, but Kirk signaled him silent.

  Kirk could feel through his skin that the man was lying, and knew that an inquiry as to why Arios had refused surrender even after his pursuer was identified as Starfleet would only get him another lie. All he said was "I see." At his nod DeSalle and his remaining guard stepped back and clipped their weapons.

  Arios gestured with fingers like knotted grass stalks under the bandages, to the others still standing on the transport disks. "Adajia of Orion," he introduced. "Raksha…"

  "Pleased," murmured the Klingon woman, coal eyes taking in not only the room but the men in it with the speculative air of one working out some mathematical puzzle in her head. A renegade? wondered Kirk. Or a watchdog for the real masters, whatever Arios's crew might call him? The Vulcan boy—Kirk didn't think he was a Romulan—looked young to be a renegade, but it was within the realm of possibility.

  "Thaddeus…" There was a moment's pause while Arios fished almost visibly for a name. "…Smith." The cherub-faced young man opened his mouth to protest, but Raksha kneed him sharply in the side of the leg. During the rest of the conversation Kirk was peripherally aware of Thad soundlessly repeating the name "Smith" to himself to remember it.

  "The Vulcan's name is Sharnas T'Gai Khir—his akhra-name, that is."

  His real name, Kirk guessed, like Mr. Spock's, would be unpronounceable. He was interested to see his Vulcan science officer's left eyebrow cant sharply upward, but taking his cue from the captain, Spock made no comment. Kirk thought Mr. Scott, finished now with double-checking the console readings, might have said something; the engineer was watching Raksha, the Klingon woman, with wary suspicion at the way she was observing every detail of the room around her. Kirk himself was more interested in the others: the way Adajia was staying as close to Arios as she could, and the blank, barely controlled dread in Thad's eyes.

  "That's Phil Cooper with Sharnas," Arios went on. "My astrogator and supercargo. We're free traders."

  There was a saying in Starfleet: Every smuggler is a free trader to his friends. But again Kirk only nodded. By their oddly assorted clothing—to say nothing of a Klingon and a Vulcan in the same crew—this scruffy rabble could have been free traders, but they lacked the typical free traders' air of careless outlandishness. The black starship might, indeed, have carried smuggled goods—something Kirk intended to find out at the earliest possible moment—but his instincts told him there was something else afoot.

  Softly, Mr. Scott said, "For free traders, ye've got the weirdest engine readings I've ever seen," but despite Raksha's sidelong glance, Arios made no sign that he heard.

  "You can talk to 'em now, Jim," said McCoy, making a note of his scanner readings and slipping the instrument back into its pack. "But I want to see every single one of these people in sickbay inside two hours." Raksha angled her head to look down over the doctor's shoulder at his tricorder, calculation in her narrowed dark eyes.

  "We found the ship derelict on the fringes of the Crossroad Nebula," Arios said, limping a little as he followed Kirk from the transporter room and around the comer to the briefing room next to the brig. DeSalle and his stalwarts trailed unobtrusively behind. "Her ID codes and log were wiped. We call her the Nautilus."

  Kirk recognized the name of the first atomic-powered submarine on Earth, and deduced that someone on board was an enthusiast, like himself, of old-time naval history. At a guess, he reflected, that would be Phil Cooper. Despite his battered, makeshift clothes, that young man still had military bearing.

  "When was this?"

  The door of the briefing room slid open before them. Arios and Raksha passed through on Kirk's heels, but Kirk was interested to notice that Thaddeus and Adajia hesitated, glancing first behind them at the two armed security officers, then, as if for reassurance, at their master. The Orion girl was keyed up, ready to flee or fight like a wildcat. Thaddeus was frankly, almost pathetically, scared, dark eyes flickering here and there like those of a small animal in a trap, sweat trickling down the black stubble of his round cheeks. At a nod from Arios he edged into the room and took a seat beside Raksha, who was examining the triangular viewscreen in the center of the table as unobtrusively as possible.

  Kirk took a seat at the head of the table, Mr. Spock to his left and Arios to his right, Scott beside Spock and Lao at the far end with a small recorder and a log pad. The door slipped soundlessly shut, and DeSalle and his men made themselves as inconspicuous as bodyguards can. Under the table, Kirk touched the signal button to request additional guards outside the door. He had the feeling both Arios and Raksha knew he did it.

  Picking his words carefully, Arios said, "We found the Nautilus four, maybe five days ago." Too recently, Kirk could almost hear him thinking, to have reported the find to authorities.

  "And you left your own ship?"

  "We had it in tow until we were attacked in the Crossroad." Dylan Arios had the most wonderful air of elflike innocence Kirk had encountered since his last brush with that redoubtable conman Harry Mudd. "The aft tractor beam went out and we lost it."

  "We've been observin' the Crossroad for days now," said Mr. Scott, folding his hands and keeping the same watchful eye on
Raksha. "I'd take oath nothing went into it from this side, and so far as anybody knows, there's nothing out there to go into it from the other side."

  Arios only shook his head. "We never got a clear look at them," he said. "The first shot came out of nowhere and took out our visual. From then we were running blind."

  "And you were headed to Tau Lyra Three for refuge?"

  He caught the glance that went between Raksha and Adajia, saw the Orion girl's eyes widen. "That was…?"

  "We weren't sure." Arios's voice cut smoothly over hers.

  A little sharply, Kirk said, "The Tau Lyra system is marked on every star chart, and in the guidance computer of every Fleet ship. And it's marked, incidentally, as Protected. There are warning buoys posted—you passed the first line of them. Landing on the third planet, orbit of that or any other planet in the system, or approach closer than the inner planets of the system, by any spaceflight civilization, even in case of life-threatening emergency, can be construed as a violation of the Non-Interference Directive. If you've received enough training to pilot a space vessel of any kind, you'd have known that."

  Raksha's mouth curved in an expression of irony; Adajia was frowning protestingly. Thaddeus, baffled, began, "But the Federation…"

  "Shut up, Thad," snapped Raksha, and Kirk's gaze snapped to the little man.

  "The Federation?" he prompted.

  Thad shrugged, with an ingenuous grin. "I forgot. Sorry. I'm only a Secondary."

  Kirk turned back to study Arios for a time in silence. "The name and ID number of your own ship?"

  "The Antelope," said Arios, his eyes resting speculatively on Kirk's face.

  "Registration numbers?"

  Arios made no reply. After a moment Spock looked up from the central table terminal and said, "There is no record of any vessel of that name in Starfleet records."

  Watching their faces, Kirk saw that Thad was startled, Adajia puzzled. Raksha's mouth quirked in a kind of wry satisfaction, like that of a prophet who has pronounced the doom of a city and seen it burned before her. Arios only nodded, thoughtful.